


Writing Excuses 10.7

by Glade



Series: Writing Excuses [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 07:49:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14444688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glade/pseuds/Glade
Summary: Take one of the secondary characters from one of the dead drops, and write about them. So, here you have: a female sword seller's rather interesting day.





	Writing Excuses 10.7

Alexa looked around the market again and tried not to sigh. The entire thing was so _monotonous_. She turns up  in a new town, hopefully sells a few swords, finds some new information, and moves on to the next town. Rinse and repeat. The mercs standing a few feet away shook hands and separated, and she scowled. She hadn’t overheard anything, and that wasn’t going to go down well with Lord Spyder himself. Not that she could do anything about that. Being a market seller didn’t exactly give her a lot of free time to eavesdrop on interesting characters.

She was distracted from her musings by a shiver of excitement running down the street towards her. The Lady Gladerider- destroyer of over 100 goblins if the rumours could be trusted- was coming this way. Alexa instinctively stood straighter, and glanced over her wares, checking whether anything was out of place.  _Not that she’ll need anything from here_ she thought darkly.  The  Gaderider  family  spent the winters in Talabheim, and Alexa was pretty sure that they had better swordsmiths than Spyder used for her weapons.  Just then, Gladerider came around the corner and everyone on the street turned to stare, and tried to look like they were doing anything but. Alexa joined them, unable to stop herself. She craned her neck, but was unable to see whether the wolf was nearby through the crowds. 

T he crowd gradually dispersed as Gladerider walked down the market row, exchanging nods and handshakes with as much of the crowd as she could. When she reached Alexa’s stall, she paused, running her eyes and then a long finger along a hunting knife. Alexa froze,  then mentally tripled her prices. Spyder didn’t care what she sold the weapons for, and Alexa could use all the money she could. 

“Lovely day,” she offered. A simple, innocent opening, an invitation for discussion.

Gladerider’s eyes flicked up, and she smiled. “Hopefully it won’t encourage the goblins,” she replied, testing the heft of a small belt knife.

Alexa shivered, despite herself. Perhaps she should move onto the next town sooner rather than later. “Are you planning on staying here until winter?” she asked, trying to sound nonchalant. Inside, her blood thrummed. How  close was she to the line between finding new information and being found out herself?

When Gladerider finally left  with a pair of brace r s with hidden throwing knives  and a grin which told Alexa she knew exactly about the price hike , Alexa sat down, suddenly feeling wobbl y as the adrenaline wore off. It was  _definitely_ time to get out of here. Gladerder seemed the nice sort of noble, and she clearly cared about the wellbeing of her subjects, but Alexa doubted that niceness would extend to suspected spies.  She packed up her stall, ignoring the incredulous looks from the other stall keepers around- it was barely noon, and most business occurred in the early evening, after the day’s work.  Packed, she traced the rune by the door with a finger, locking everything in place until she traced it again, and walked towards the inn, resisting the urge to run. For one thing, it was too hot, and for another, it would mark her out even more obviously than packing up at such a strange time had done. 

She paused at one stall to buy a bag of apples, and another for some dried meat, trying to let the normalcy of the motions sooth her.  She started humming a love song as she walked, and was mostly calm when she reached the inn where her horse s \- a  well matched pair of  cob s \- w ere stabled.  She helped the stable-hand  harness them, and led them out into the bright sunshine. 

T he yelling of children caught her attention, and she turned to stare at a handful of children about Thom’s age running around on a dusty patch of ground.  The stablehand joined her a moment later.

“Would’ne pegged ya as a children person,” he said, leaning on a rake to watch them run around.

“No?” she asked, amused. “I have one, back in Dunburnt. About their age too, I think.”

“Huh,” he replied, and they fell silent.

Taking the silence as invitation, she explained about him. “He’s 10, and determined to become a monk. He lives with my wife there, travelling the state isn’t exactly conducive to his education.” She felt a stab of shame at that, the idea of leaving Thom behind, caught in the Spyder’s web,  but there wasn’t anything she could do about it. Once caught, the spyder rarely let anything get away.

“Huh,” the stablehand said again. “Well, I best be gettin’ back ta work.” He strolled off, whistling, and she turned her horses and led them back down the road towards the market and her cart.


End file.
